Transcript

CUE, standing for Contested Urban Environment, is a five-nation research program. The aim of the program is to confront the urban environment stress the technologies with what we call the urban stressors. Like the artificial light that you find in an urban environment during the night-time.

So, that’s quite difficult for our night vision systems. You know, the different what we call urban canyons that you can find in dense urban environments. It’s very difficult on the communications and the GPS. These are characteristics of the cities that we’re looking for.

My name is Patrick Maupin. I am the Experiment Director for the Contested Urban Environment Experimentation happening in Montreal.

We’ve got, in Montreal, around a 150 scientists and technologists that are manning the different technologies. Our main partners are the NATO Nations, but also the TTCP of five eyes countries: Australia, Canada, of course, New Zealand, United Kingdom and the US. We’ve got also about 100 soldiers from the 3rd Battalion Royal 22e Regiment.

So, these guys are working together. They get trained together and then, they go out on the streets and they test our technologies. We are testing in Montreal different technologies, over 50 of them. We’ve got the protection systems for, you know, protecting areas or fencing of areas from any intrusion. The ground-based ISR Systems. That’s a set of sensors that are deployed on the ground or we’ve got airborne systems.

Currently, over Montreal, as we deploy our troops and other technologies downtown, we’ve got two aircraft flying over the area equipped with quite special cameras.

We’ve got soldiers systems with sensors, GPS and a tactical radio. So, we’ve got about 24, 25 soldiers wearing those tactical vests.

We’re trying to find new synergies between the technologies. And very often, we discover, you know, things that we have never thought about before. We’re discovering new capabilities.

So, to me, that is really the most interesting thing about the experimentation.